Attention crypto traders, Bitstamp refuses to transfer money

What’s the problem?

As most of you know, spring 2017 was crazy in $Crypto. So many coins made lift offs straight to moon (which basically means, weekly charts increasing by >10%). At one point in time, you might wanna take money off the table, e.g. preparing to pay taxes by the end of the year.
I’m a loyal customer with Bitstamp for years, but only in a one way street. Eventually Fiat (US$ or EUR) were transferred to Bitstamp to buy fractions of Bitcoins. But I’ve never tried to move money back to my regular account at comdirect. It actually never crossed my mind before, because I mostly HODL. This has changed dramatically in Q1and Q2.

After a little chitchat with a co-worker, I was made aware of a possible problem with the combination of Bitstamp and comdirect.

What happened?

Long story short: Bitstamp refuses to transfer money to my german bank. You should know, that comdirect is the online sibling of Commerzbank AG, one of Germany’s biggest banks. Both entities are listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, Commerzbank even is part of Germany’s Top 30 index called DAX.

On August 11th I’ve made contact with Bitstamp customer service, after a transfer wasn’t even sent. From there on I’ve tried to get my money from Bitstamp to comdirect. In endless conversations with Bitstamp reps nothing changed their opinion on the subject. Lucky me, I have some sort of a direct line to comdirect, which lead to their customer service head calling me back several times, verifying, that neither comdirect nor Commerzbank have blacklisted neither Bitstamp or any other crypto exchange.

I’ve bent over backwards to encourage Bitstamp to talk to comdirect, not only in my behalf, but in general terms. I assume it’s a mutual interest for Bitstamp to sort out problems with a major bank in Germany for their clients. But man, was I wrong. They rejected my offers to hook them up several times and kept on asking for a statement of comdirect, that my transfer will go through.
In what world are you living? Thousands of SEPA are executed in minutes and Bitstamp expects, that the system somehow magically looks out for a specific one and let it go through? Well, at least Bitstamp has finally talked to my guy @ comdirect, but they won’t budge on the required statement.

Solution

It’s a good thing, I’ve checked on this problem way before year’s end. Today a nice chunk of Euros arrived from my Kraken account on my bank account with comdirect. No problem, no hassle, no arguments. Guess, comdirect isn’t the old grandpa, fighting against the new guy in town. Strangely it’s Bitstamp, which basically fights its own customers. Having said all this, I do not doubt, that Bitstamp suffered from rejections in the past, but what else do they expect from a customer to do? It is bad service from Bitstamp!

Well, I’ll move my business to Kraken. That’s so much easier than in the banking world.

I will always remember you Bitstamp, because I bought my first Satoshis with you.